I have a confession: if I weren't a designer, I would have been an archaeologist.
I've always had this thing for ancient times. I love imagining how life looked hundreds of years ago — how civilizations developed, how objects were made, how techniques were passed down through generations. Maybe it's a past life. I genuinely don't know. But it's been part of me for as long as I can remember.
A few years ago, I came across an article about an ancient sailing boat discovered in the depths of the sea near Caesarea, Israel. It stopped me completely. The combination of my love for the sea and my love for archaeology — it all came together in one moment.
I started researching ancient boats. And I discovered something fascinating: centuries ago, boats were built using a technique called hull planking — where wooden boards are layered and interlocked in a weave pattern, one crossing over the other, like a textile. Like warp and weft.
And something clicked.
I'm a textile designer. I think in weaves, in structures, in the way materials hold each other together. And here was an ancient boat-building technique that was essentially doing the same thing — just in wood, at sea, hundreds of years ago.
What if I took that structure and turned it into a basket?
It sounds simple. It wasn't. Getting the measurements and the spacing exactly right — precise enough to interlock cleanly and weave a textile rope through — was genuinely one of the more challenging technical problems I've worked on. But eventually, I got it right.
And that's how the Hull Baskets were born.
So if one of these baskets sits in your home, or you've simply admired it on our website — now you know. It didn't start with a sketch. It started with an ancient boat at the bottom of the sea. 🪢